


Drowning Days

by remiges



Series: Drowning Days [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 15:09:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7646038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remiges/pseuds/remiges
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They don't talk about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drowning Days

They don't talk about it.

 

* * *

 

They take more hunts, Dean and Dad, and their trail meanders east in a path across the endless plains of the Midwest. They've got a hunt in Arkansas, in Ohio, in New Hampshire. Dean wonders what they're going to do when they hit the ocean, if they'll just keep going into the swells since Dad seems incapable of turning back around.

Dean wonders if he'd follow, if it came to that.

 

* * *

 

His dreams are… heavy is the closest word he knows, and even then it doesn't make sense. It feels like water in his lungs, like listing at the bottom of the ocean under fathoms of pressure.

He wants sleep like he wants food: a physical need. But that's not quite right. He wants to rest, wants to come back to himself whole in a way he hasn't been since the Greyhound station in Fort Worth.

Heavy, fuck. He doesn't know how to describe it, so it's a good thing no one's asking.

 

* * *

 

Dean catches himself turning during "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" for someone to sing the chorus with, and the words stumble. He's digging in his back pocket before he can stop himself, and then his phone is in his hand. He hesitates.

A semi blows past and the wind buffets the car, trickles in through the windows whispering _selfish_ , _selfish_. Dean swears and tells himself he's doing the right thing as he tosses the phone into the empty passenger seat.

He hits the steering wheel with the ball of his hand and cranks the volume, belts the words as the horizon grinds closer and closer. Nothing's changed. He doesn't meet his gaze in the rearview mirror.

 

* * *

 

They split up more now, different cars, different hunts. Time passes in fits and starts, engine idling, wipers going. The billboards advertising for NYU and CUNY and state universities multiply. Dean hadn't recognized them before, or maybe they just blurred by with the rest of the scenery, nothing sticking out to tell him the end was coming.

And that's the thing about endings, isn't it? There's no moment to pick out and say, oh. There. That right there, that was where things started falling to pieces. Somewhere between the acceptance letters and holding hands when crossing the road, somewhere in between it all fell apart.  

 

* * *

 

Life distends—choking on burning bodies, bones crushing under his fists, guts spilling on wet leaves—or maybe it contracts down to one moment. Here, the latest stop in an endless line of vacancy signs, rinsing brains out of his hair, chunks clogging up the drain so he's standing in an inch and a half of water gone tepid.

Dean sets his foot down on something rubbery and slick, graying water sloshing with the movement. The… _thing_ , he can't think too hard about what it is, squishes. He has a sudden sense memory of the plum he'd bought last week at a fruit stand without thinking too hard about who he was buying it for. He'd left it rolling around on the dashboard for so long that when he picked it up, his fingers crushed the too-soft flesh in a display of accidental brutality.

Dean steps backwards like he can escape the memory, but there's no traction. He slips into the shower curtain and it clings, clammy and mildewed, against his shoulders. There was a ghoul a couple of hunts back who got under his guard. When Dean grabbed it, its skin sloughed off in ragged pieces, damp and cool, and Dean gags on the memory.

He trips over the lip of the tub trying to get away, yanks the curtain rod down with him in a clatter, lands hard. The bathroom is claustrophobic in its size, but the toilet is close enough to scramble to on his knees.

Dean retches, grabbing at the porcelain with slick fingers that slide off the surface. Nothing comes up.

There's graveyard dirt under his nails, a gash on his thigh he stitched himself, a high-pitched ringing in his left ear, and Dean knows, like he's always known even if he hasn't always believed, that he's going to die here.

Not this motel. Maybe not even the next one. But somewhere—his body scaring the maid or decomposing in a marsh, reduced to a pile of bones or consumed by something with a taste for flesh. Just another missing person's report, except—and he heaves wildly, the force making his eyes water and starbursts flash—except there can't _be_ a missing person's report without someone to miss you.

His home up and moved to California, chasing a life where the air doesn't smell like rot and the rising sun doesn't mean closing time. Where the people are beautiful and blind and so goddamn perfect Dean chokes on it.

He grinds his teeth and shivers, drips on the tiles, the grout, the edge of the shower curtain caught under his knee. He gets up before the bath overflows.

In the morning, it all seems distant and distorted. A dream fragmenting in the light. He knew what he was getting into, after all, and he's still got Dad.

Dean leaves the mess in the bathroom, sets a huge tip on the counter for the maid. He looks in the mirror, and aside from the bruise cresting his cheek, the slice on his arm from a bar fight in Philly, he looks fine.

He’s fine.

 

* * *

 

Dad turns back before they hit the coast, takes a hunt in San Francisco like he's got something to prove. Dean stays to finish up a haunting.

Down by the shore, the Atlantic rolling over his feet, Dean imagines he can hear the Pacific calling. He can feel it almost, the brine in the air, the undertow dragging his feet out from under him.

He calls just to hear the message play out. It's not the same, but nothing is. No matter the routes he takes, the roads that don't bear the impressions of their boots, he can't shake the ghost of their lives. It haunts him with facts he never gets the chance to tell, pranks he never does, food stands he drives right by.

Dean will keep the ghosts. He doesn't want to drop his life and run, abandon everyone he's ever loved.  

The phone flips over to voice mail, and the waves whisper _selfish_ , _selfish_.

 

* * *

 

He gets a couple good punches in before they kick him out.

In the parking lot, an oil slick shimmers like a mirage on a highway. There's a sudden pain in Dean's palms, his knees, and he realizes after a too-long moment that he's fallen over. The pain is distant, like it belongs to a body removed from himself. He hopes irrationally that he's not the only one feeling it.

There are traceries of blood and lines of gravel folded into the sheets when he wakes up in the morning. The décor is from the sixties, a nauseating twist of olive greens and burnt oranges, and Dean want to hurl.

He's been here before, he thinks. He'll probably be back again. And isn't that a kick in the teeth? Back again, like back is a place instead of a feeling curled noose-tight around his heart. Like if he retraced his path across a string of no-tell motels and seedy bars he could unwind time and put everything back together again.

Dean rubs his hand, can feel the impact from his fist last night even if he can't remember the punches. He picks at the grime embedded in his palms, the stinging rawness of his scrapes.

He checks his phone for messages he knows won’t exist and hates himself for it.

 

* * *

 

There's a steady stream of drowning days washing everything out except for the betrayal, the rage, the ache of something too big to put a name to. Dean lives roadside motel to roadside motel, seedy bar to greasy diner, and home is nothing more than a word spelled backwards in the rearview mirror.

The telephone lines curve past in endless swells, and his dreams are full of water, of terns circling, of an ocean floor too far away to touch.

He wakes up tapping Morse code. Always three letters. Always beginning with S.

 

* * *

 

He realizes somewhere in the backwoods in Virginia, trying to staunch the bleeding before he passes out, that this could be it. This could be the rest of his life if he doesn't get his head on right. The wendigo is a smoldering mass, but he'd forgotten just for a moment, just for a split-second, that he doesn't have anyone to watch his back. His stupid, treacherous body still think it's part of a whole rather than a single entity.

The pain is jagged and sharp, his pant leg sodden with blood, and Dean curses. He curses until the morphine kicks in, until he can drive back to the motel with one blood-slick hand on the wheel while the other holds his body together white-knuckled.

 

* * *

 

He buys a bottle of Wild Turkey, figures it's the least he can do. Stanford is on a break—Dean checked the calendar—and he's proud, of course he's proud. He should celebrate.

There's a phone in his hand, then it's on the floor. He's crouched by a double bed, almost like he's praying, and what a stupid thought. The room’s phone is lying on the floor in a tangle of cord. The dial tone buzzes through the room, through his head. There's a number he's supposed to call, but he keeps forgetting how many digits it's supposed to have, keeps forgetting the shape of it in his mouth.

He doesn't know how he got here.

There's a bottle in his hand, then it's on the floor. But it's okay. It's okay it's okay it's—Sam is in his head, and Dean's glad, he's _glad_ Sam found something to love even if that thing wasn't him, didn't wear his cologne or share his memories, the broken knuckles on his hand, their childhood, their monsters, their lives spinning out against the spool of the highway—

He wakes up half-naked, bits of crap from the carpet stuck to his skin, lying on the floor by the foot of the bed. The TV is playing some documentary on manatees, and he can just make out the glint of the bottle under the bed.

There's blood on his knuckles, and he can't remember how it got there.

He hauls himself onto the bed because he's not fucking pathetic, and goes back to sleep without checking for messages. He doesn't call when it's morning, even though he's still not entirely sober.

It's too early in California, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Come hang out with me on [tumblr!](https://enter-remiges.tumblr.com/)


End file.
